European Trade Union Committee for Education

Between April 2016 and February 2017, the Swiss Dachverband Lehrer und Lehrerinnen Schweiz (LCH) has published a series on teacher’s health in their monthly magazine. The LCH carried out a comprehensive project on teachers’ health in Switzerland, aiming at strengthening health promotion and health protection in Swiss schools and eventually establishing an occupational health management at every school throughout the country. LCH’s magazine accompanied the project and the published articles show the diverse parts of the project, such as a presentation of individual fates of teachers fallen ill, an example of health management at a school, the calculation of the public and private costs related to unhealthy teachers, an evaluation of federal law with regard to health promotion and health protection in schools. The results of the project highlight the need of health management for teachers in schools: about 1/5 of the teachers work part-time to counter health risks related to their profession, they suffer from a lack of breaks and the infrastructure (lights, air quality and acoustics) is weak.

Teachers’ health and well-being is high on ETUCE’s agenda and has been subject of several projects. From 2014-2016, ETUCE ran a project entitled “Social Partners Promoting Decent Workplaces in the Education Sector for a Healthier Working Life” which used country case studies to identify good practice of preventing work-related stress and psychosocial hazards. Based on this project, ETUCE together with EFEE (European Federation of Education Employers) and EU-OSHA are planning to develop an online interactive risk assessment tool for the education sector. Other ETUCE projects dealt, for instance, with third-party violence, cyber harassment and teachers’ health and safety in times of austerity.